Symmetry and its symbolic values:

Purity, perfection, eternity, beauty

In classical Greek culture symmetry was a top benchmark. It symbolized purity, perfection, eternity, and beauty. These abstract references were probably imported from Egypt (or from the East) by ancient Greeks. From there they spread to the West influencing our ways of thinking including ethics, arts, science, and technology.

Symmetry, the ultimate reference, has resulted in idealized moral values regarding care for oneself, one’s happiness, and personal virtues: perfection, purity; Christianity even promised us eternal life. Symmetry gave rise to numerous moral theories as well: Confucius, Epicurus, Plato, Spinoza, Kant and many others

Unlike the hard sciences which confirm their theories through experimentation, classical moral theories are difficult to verify and therefore less credible. In fact, they are usually based on traditions, beliefs, and various degrees of speculation and observations. Furthermore, their quest for overly absolute values resulted in unsustainable and tyrannical political-religious constraints over the centuries.

Focusing on Man as the “measure of all things”, certain ancient ethics held human beings responsible for all evil. A liberation movement emerged with the advent of “freedom of conscience”, postulated by Luther around 1520, and this form of thinking further solidified its status with the French Revolution and the Declaration of Human Rights in 1789. It then spread across the globe in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Freedom of Conscience has undoubtedly set free the energies of entrepreneurs and free thinkers; it may even have contributed to the rise of capitalism (Max Weber), but it also presents some serious drawbacks:

It is highly subjective and favours individualism at the expense of the “common good” (focusing on Man, it ignores the environment or else considers it as just a habitat in the service of Man).
It is not appropriate for institutions, as they have no conscience; however, institutions play a leading role in society. The individuals in charge of these institutions who wish to promote their ethical values are not free to do so because they owe their loyalty and faithfulness to their employer. Institutions always have good excuses for ignoring legitimate criticism: superior reasoning, State secrets, budget considerations, competition, respect of hierachy etc.
Lastly, this freedom – which lacks any formal limits – has paved the way to great excess.

We therefore need a new form of ethics for institutions in order to provide a counterbalance to the Freedom of Conscience of the individual players, some of whom have an incorrigible need to accumulate and think only of their own interests.

It should be pointed out that in our current economic system individuals are often threatened, humiliated, and harassed. We must accept that they primarily defend their interests or the interests of their family or relatives since the competition is so tough.

One can reform institutions, but not Humans. This system of ethics should thus be based on more “objective” values. It should be able to direct institutional actions towards the common good with more fairness and justice. Hopefully it would regain the trust of the people who have been outraged by their abuses in the past. So far, institutions have all too often favoured the private interests of a minority by reinforcing the natural and selfish inclinations of the individuals.

A rebalancing is necessary, but how to do it ? During a conference of the “Observatory of finance” in Geneva, a regulator of the London exchange told us of his dismay at the lack of objective and reliable reference material at his disposal. Jokingly he asked us if he should base himself on the “Ten commandments” to regulate the Stock Exchange. This shows how far we still have to go.

An ethical system has no value unless it is shared like a highway code. In the context of globalization, we need a “universal” ethical system. Religious and traditional ethics are local and differ from one place to another. They work relatively well on small scales, such as the village, but they no longer work at all on the large scales of globalization.

For centuries humans have interacted closely, eye to eye, sometimes skin to skin, so that they have learned the body language of their partners, whether friends or adversaries. A smile, a grimace, a blink of the eyes, a shrug of the shoulders, a jerky breath and the message was received and they knew if they had done good or bad.

With globalization and the change of scale, individuals have lost direct contact and the ethical springs have broken down. A trader in New York or London protects his portfolio with a click of the mouse; he thinks he is doing good, but he does not see the damage he is causing far from home. Industrialist export goods for their own profit, they do not see the disruption they cause overseas. Their actions always have an impact on other markets or on nature itself. An activist attacks an individual on social networks without restraint, he does not see the psychological damage he causes.
We therefore need to regulate the large and lax private and public institutions, but what benchmark to use? In the absence of a frame of reference adapted to current needs, a new ethic must be invented, not only to curb the ardor of actors motivated by the lure of gain and power, but above all to direct institutions towards the common good.

Answering the needs of institutions of all kinds by giving them an objective and reliable frame of reference… This is the purpose of this draft of a “universal” ethics.

Reliable ethics, shared by many (like the metric system) would allow for a more harmonious process of globalization. The inflation of ethical systems has created a Babel Tower and a great confusion of values. Having too many ethical systems kills Ethics!

In the scientific disciplines, references to perfect symmetry have been successful, as evidence by the discoveries of Albert Einstein who started from the notion of symmetry to construct the theory of general relativity. However they lead us to perceive the world as an abstract construction, totally determined and non evolutionary, in contradiction with Ch. Darwin discoveries and recent scientific progresses.

Lets have a look at what “Slightly broken symmetry” has in store for us.